new unit extends hospital’s trauma care

HILLCREST 
The walls are the same soft beige. The abstract artwork and bulletin boards haven’t moved.

Don’t let that fool you.

Important changes have come to the fifth floor of UC San Diego Medical Center.

For the first time, a continuous care trauma unit has been created at the Hillcrest hospital for patients suffering potentially life-threatening injuries in car crashes, serious falls, assaults or in other ways.

That means once trauma patients are whisked into the hospital and taken to the trauma resuscitation room, have surgery if necessary and are monitored in the intensive care unit, they move to the fifth floor for the rest of their hospital stay.

The fifth floor is now home to a dedicated trauma unit where 30 nurses have been intensively trained in trauma care. About $200,000 has been spent on the training and $250,000 to equip all 24 beds with technology almost on par with the ICU, officials said.

Previously, stabilized trauma patients were moved from the ICU into rooms scattered around the hospital. That’s still the system around the country, including at the five other hospitals designated as trauma centers in San Diego County, said Dr. Raul Coimbra, a trauma surgeon and chief of the medical center’s Division of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care and Burns.

“This is a trend in trauma care that we want to do,” he said. “This is a very important moment for the trauma program at UC San Diego.

“In a progressive care unit like this, physicians, nurses and other health providers interact on a daily basis. It’s the same team working together, and families get to know the nurses and doctors,” he said.

The trauma center overhaul includes replacing the old resuscitation room with an up-to-date, four-bed facility costing $2.3 million. UC San Diego Medical Center has one of the county’s two Level 1 trauma centers for adults, able to care for the most-critical patients; nearby Scripps Mercy Hospital is the other. The trauma center treats about 2,600 patients a year.

On Wednesday, about 30 doctors, nurses and other balloon-toting staff members laughed and chatted during a ceremonial ribbon-cutting, although the fifth-floor unit has been open for two months.

“Trauma has always been a close-knit family,” said registered nurse Sharon Pacyna, the hospital’s trauma program manager.

“I think we’re going to provide better patient care and better family care” with the changes.

In addition to reworking the trauma center, the busy emergency department has undergone a $14 million expansion due to be finished next month. Twelve beds in private glass-walled rooms have been added to what had been a cramped, 24-bed department handling nearly 60,000 patients a year.

The medical center changes fit with ambitious plans for the entire UC San Diego Health System.

A $664 million, 10-story Jacobs Medical Center is due to break ground later this year. The specialty hospital will be built at the health system’s La Jolla medical campus where Thornton Hospital, Moores Cancer Center and Shiley Eye Center are clustered.

The Jacobs hospital will handle maternity and infant care, cancer treatment and advanced surgery. Those services will be moved from the Hillcrest hospital, which will then focus on its trauma center, emergency room, burn center and outpatient services.